Party Away the Demons With Workout, Brooklyn’s Irony-Free Rockers

When the guys from Workout start their set, it’s like Mike D kicking down the door in the video for the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right to Party” (minus the dickish punching and stealing).

Onstage, singer Jack Killen pulls moves that make even the most insecure dancer feel superior, while former U.S. Air Guitar Championship finalist Alex Forbes shreds his real ax with as much ferocity as he does a fake one. Bassist Jason Langdon, an ex-designer for Apple, jumps around stage in precarious lunges and headbangs. Drummer and Captain Haddock lookalike Tim Traynor somehow projects an explosiveness from behind the kit that eclipses his receded position onstage.

They don’t look cool doing it, and they know it. And in a nauseating sea of pretentious new bands where that seems to be the primary goal, this simple fact frees audiences up to just enjoy the ride.

At first exposure, Workout’s performances can seem almost sarcastic. In fact, the first time I saw previous Killen projects, I thought he was making fun of the audience for even watching. (The product of years of elitist training that any public sincerity is either talentless or ironic.) But after a few shows, I saw the light. And in the cynical darkness of indie posers, it was refreshing. No irony, just rock.

“It’s definitely not satire,” says Killen. “A smile is contagious. The best thing in the world is looking out and seeing people smiling because they’re just happy, they’re psyched.”

“It’s OK to laugh,” says Forbes. “Both at us and with us.”

From Kiss to Andrew WK to Tenacious D, stadium and party rock has been chewed up and spit out many times over. The genre isn’t new, but Workout advances it into the realm of the weird and packs it into thoughtful, lasting songs.

“Once Jason and I were in a bar in Seattle,” says Killen, “And we read a quote by Mick Jaggar that said, ‘Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.’ And I think we take that to the limit.”

At South by Southwest this year, Workout stood out among the sea of bands. Twice I saw the group turn a room with a handful of awkward bystanders into a crowd of new fans. The night after playing to their biggest crowd ever at a showcase with Tenacious D, the band members were back playing a brutal afternoon show in a tiny apartment off Sixth Street in Austin, Texas. The band before them was a young pop-punk outfit playing to six friends.

It’s a situation that would break the spirit of a lot of bands. The venue had been changed at the last minute and it wasn’t clear who was really organizing the show, if anyone. It was 4 p.m. and the “sound guy” was some kid smoking a joint. Killen and Forbes did shots of Kentucky Gentleman bourbon mixed with NO-Xplode weight-gain powder they found behind a makeshift bar, forcing some silliness. Forbes took out one lens of his sunglasses, looking slightly demented.

Usually the Workout guys seem incapable of depression, but under the influence of physical exhaustion and what looked to be a turd of a show, they seemed to be headed that way. They leaned hard into a 12-pack of Bud Light Lime and started playing. Almost immediately, the whole vibe changed. People came in off the street and after just a few minutes, the place was packed (not saying much given the size of the room, but still).

Between songs, Killen dropped his mic on his keyboard and it hit some of the keys, making a dissonant sound.

“Love is like tri-notes on a keyboard,” he said. “Really shitty sometimes.”

Workout plays a house show at SXSW 2012. From left to right: Jason Langdon, Jack Killen, Tim Traynor and Alex Forbes.

It turned out to be one of Workout’s best shows. During one song, Killen climbed some stairs in the apartment, propped a foot up on the railing and pumped his groin into the blushing face of a soon-to-be fan. Later he threw himself on the laps of kids sitting on the couch, stroking their faces. During a solo, Forbes climbed over the couch, rolled with comedic slowness over the counter into the kitchen, then came out the doorway and back into the living room without missing a note. He finished off the set by smashing his guitar into the ground and fake hate-humping it.

The band’s finale included stopping and restarting a barroom sing-along-type outro a couple of times, screwing with the audience who thought it was over. During the final restart, a friend of theirs from Brooklyn showed up, so they played a few more songs. At the end of those, as everyone was putting down their instruments, drummer Traynor counted off with his sticks and the rest of the band rushed to get back into position so they could hit the one for yet another time through the outro. The show was wacky, cathartic and transformative.

Forbes breaches the fourth wall by shredding on an apartment staircase.

The first time I met Killen and bass player Langdon, they were playing a show at a dive bar near the ballpark in San Francisco. They were a duo with a couple of keyboards and full workout getup — sweatbands, legwarmers and tights.

“What we did at the time was the easiest form of music that we could do,” says Langdon. “We have these cheap keyboards, we have this cheap drum machine, that’s it. Then when that was wearing too thin we were like, ‘Alright, maybe we could use a guitar.'”

A later project of Killen’s (sans Langdon, but with Forbes), called Mr. Divisadero, had the epicness of Workout’s current songs but was sonically stunted by equipment, like electronic drums, that could never really get loud enough. At each performance, Killen and Forbes’ electricity won over initially skeptical audiences, building on arena-rock traditions on sparsely populated bar patios in broad daylight.

A few years ago, Killen and Forbes moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and once again joined forces with Langdon and Traynor. They all live within a few blocks of each other. Three of them work at the same beer distributor. A couple of their girlfriends live together.

Langdon, left, and Traynor demonstrate a high level of professionalism.

“It’s like the Beatles in that movie Help! where it’s just four houses in a row,” says Langdon.

Forbes even has a makeshift pub in his apartment called The Püb, (“Pronounced like ‘pube’ or ‘pyoooob,'” says Forbes), in which, according to him via e-mail, “there is a neon beer visible from the street, a dartboard, crappy iPhone speakers, mini fridge full of beer, a picture of Randy Rhoads, tons of beer-sponsor signage all over the place and a gargoyle toilet paper dispenser. Typical activities include shotgunning, extreme darts, not letting people in if they’re not on the list, chips, really clever jokes and slam poetry. It is not yet Zagat rated.”

Part of the job at the beer distributor involves event planning, which the band members are happy to use to their advantage. They recently got Radeberger to sponsor a party bus from Brooklyn to their show at a bar in Manhattan. There was a DJ and free beer on board and the bus made three overflowing trips.

But for all the good times that being in a rowdy band with your best friends brings, Killen’s lyrics hint at a more troubled outlook than he displays onstage or in person.

Some signature lyrics from “I Wanna Die With You” include: “Deep in the heart of man / Is a burning I can’t understand” and the triumphant chorus, “Everyone’s going to die / I wanna die with you.”

“I still don’t know what some of these songs are really about,” says Forbes.

“We try to have lyrics that have depth to them, but at the same time I don’t want to be a pretentious band,” says Killen. “I want to be a fun band. There are so many bands that people don’t want to go see. Sometimes I even struggle telling people, ‘Yeah, I’m in a band.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh god, don’t invite me.’

Killen thrives on audience participation.

Killen grew up in Nantucket and exudes a sort of eccentric, manic optimism. It’s a magnetic cocktail that is instantly fun to be around, but he doesn’t shy away or try to hide his more grounded side.

“Ultimately there’s no glory without the dark stuff,” he says. “The constant turmoil of life, the constant crap you gotta put up with, you know, it’s a mess, a complete mess. You have those dark moments but you come out and hope your band can transmute [the performance] like that. The combination of indisputably sincere music with the element of ‘what the fuck?’ … I think we do that exceptionally well,” says Killen.

Even if the rest of the band doesn’t quite understand the words, they value them as a key asset along with the songwriting.

“That’s an edge we have,” says Traynor. “A lot of bands these days put on a great show but it’s like, ‘Where’s the song?’ It’s like one long song that you’re playing over and over again.”

Friend of the band and previous collaborator Dan Wilson watches Workout’s performance at The Stage on Sixth at SXSW 2012.

After seeing a few of the band’s shows, one can’t help but wonder if the energy and enthusiasm is sustainable. At this point, however, Workout seem indefatigable.

“In Brooklyn, there’s this guy who directs traffic right by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway who just kind of flags the cars as they go by,” says Langdon. “It’s just this dude who’s always dancing and having fun as he’s directing the cars. You can be the guy who just stands there and makes the motion very slowly, points that way, or you can be the guy who’s having fun while directing cars and dancing and making sure everyone is having a good time as they are making that left onto the highway.”

Here’s The Thing With Ad Blockers

We get it: Ads aren’t what you’re here for. But ads help us keep the lights on. So, add us to your ad blocker’s whitelist or pay $1 per week for an ad-free version of WIRED. Either way, you are supporting our journalism. We’d really appreciate it.